Discalced Carmelites call Seculars to embrace vocation as ‘coequal members of the order’

When most Catholics think about Carmelites, they picture friars and nuns in full habits. If they love St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Thérèse, they may even think about their teachings on prayer, the “Dark Night of the Soul,” and the “Little Way.”

But like many of the so-called mendicant orders — which have traditionally relied on charity to survive — Carmelites have an order of laypeople who meet monthly in community and who develop a deep life of prayer over many years. They also study and discuss the writings of the Carmelite saints so they might become more like them and therefore more like God.

The call to Secular Carmelites

In 2003, in a move meant to signal that the laity is of equal importance to the priests and nuns who make up the first and second orders, the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD) — which is St. Teresa’s reform group — changed the name of its lay order from Third Order Carmelites to Secular Carmelites (OCDS). Not everyone in the order truly understood what that meant in practice.

That changed during the first world meeting of OCDS Carmelites in the history of the order, held July 23–26, 2026, in Ávila, Spain, where the leaders of the Order of Discalced Carmelites called upon their almost 33,000 Seculars to fully embrace their vocation as coequal members of the order.

This historic call was enthusiastically embraced by the more than 900 Secular Carmelites who attended from almost 80 of the 92 countries in which Secular Carmelite communities are present.

“In the past, people thought, ‘Whatever the priests say.’ Seculars were more like followers whereas now, they are called to be leaders,” said Father Ramiro Casale, OCD, general delegate to the OCDS, in an exclusive interview with EWTN News.

“The Fathers are called to the sacraments, preaching, teaching, accompanying people. Carmelite nuns are cloistered so they offer their lives for Christ and the Church and the world. [But] the Seculars have access to so many places where the friars and nuns are not present. They have biological children and are very engaged in their work and in different apostolates in the Church, and they are very well-prepared. I tell them that they have a voice and that voice needs to be heard,” Casale said.

Of course, this call to the laity is partly due to the fact that Secular Carmelites outnumber Carmelite priests by more than 8 to 1. This imbalance is not limited to the Carmelite order. The Secular Franciscan Order outnumbers its friars by roughly 25 to 1, while Lay Dominicans outnumber their friars by more than 26 to 1.

Another major factor is also at play.

“We need only look around us to see that the world is still on fire,” Ramiro said. In a world in which consumerism, secularization, self-promotion, and a thirst for power rule, the Secular Carmelite order needs “a greater awareness of its professional and vocational identity … [a] rich prayer life … [and a] growing cooperation with the entire Carmelite family. We live in a time where human beings — even if they do not often express it in words — want to find a path that gives meaning and direction to their lives. They thirst for us.”

‘Everyone is a house for God’

Father Miguel Marquez Calle, OCD, superior general of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, explained in a one-on-one interview with EWTN News that the charism of the Carmelite order is what Carmelites lovingly refer to as “a call to ‘The Interior Castle.’” That is a reference to St. Teresa’s masterwork in which she compares the soul to a mansion with many rooms, all of which lead to the center of the castle, which is where God dwells.

“We offer an invitation to live this richness of the presence of God in the soul of everyone, and to share it as St. Teresa did, with a joy that is contagious. We show the world that we are not empty, everyone is a house for God, and that gives life meaning.”

The temptation, even for Carmelites, is to become divided like the world is divided. But Calle said the remedy is to be like St. Teresa, who was able to handle criticism with humor because she was not full of self but full of God. In fact, when a group of friars wanted St. Teresa’s partner in reforming the old order, St. John of the Cross, removed as head of the friars, he famously joined his detractors and signed the petition requesting his removal, saying he was not worthy of the position.

Meeting highlights call to prayer, service, and leadership

The world meeting (“encuentro mundial”), appropriately titled “Witnesses to the Experience of God: Identity and Mission,” was a call to communion, to a deeper prayer life, and to leadership. In recent years, the secular order has been making important inroads into the leadership role to which the order is explicitly calling them.

With the largest population in the Western world, the United States boasts approximately 6,000 Secular Carmelites, the largest of any country, although Asia has the largest number of Seculars on any continent. A collaborative effort to standardize and unify various regional formation practices into a single national program by and for OCDS Carmelites began in 2017, was officially approved in early 2023, and was released and distributed by ICS publications on March 1, 2024.

The program consists of a handbook for formators and six official formation manuals covering all stages of formation. In the works are two manuals for those who are definitively professed and a manual for spiritual assistants. The program was presented at the world meeting by Angela Vel from the Washington Province of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and may become a model, or perhaps the basis of a similar effort, for OCDS communities around the world.

“I think that we have lost sight of our apostolate in many communities,” said Ramon Gras, who is also a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in the Washington Province. “One of the things that we have been reminded of this week is that we, as Secular Carmelites, have access to the world in ways that the other two branches of the order do not. The national formation program is not just something to fill our head with facts, but it’s something to help us to develop our spirituality and to give us a renewed sense of purpose.”

He added: “Our formation program tells us that our saints say prayer and service are two sides of the same coin, so we need to review what we are currently doing in our apostolates and determine whether we are serving the current needs of the Church.”

When asked for examples of successful community apostolates, Casale highlighted two that he finds especially impressive.

“There is one in Venezuela called Nagoanagoa,” he said. “Thatʼs an Indian name. It was formed by medical doctors who began to go to the jungle to help people with no access to healthcare. It was something so attractive to others that many other people began to join them: engineers, people who knew about agriculture, dentists — so many people wanted to help. But everything began in the OCDS. Thatʼs something really beautiful, and itʼs happening still.”

The other example is a project in Portugal called Casa de Comunión. “The interesting thing about this is that they have a community of nuns, a community of friars, and two communities of OCDS and they share life together,” Casale explained. “They don’t live together, but they do things together. They organize retreats, they organize talks for young people and for marriages, and they help in the local diocese, so this is an example of collaboration between the three branches of the order.”

‘We are a family’

The three branches don’t just work together; they enjoy one another’s company via various forms of recreation and by sharing the joys and challenges of the work. As Casale said: “We [the Discalced Carmelites] are a team; we are a family, and we need to help each other.”

Esther Tijerina, a community-minded Carmelite from Texas, came to the conference despite some difficult health challenges over the past year. She had her own epiphany regarding the order’s call to fraternity and community during the conference. Tijerina reached out to one woman who rebuffed her not once but twice. “It took three days, but she walked with me and she smiled and she apologized for how she had been on that first day,” Tijerina said. “I learned not to give up because I donʼt know what her load is; I donʼt know what her baggage is.”

Susy Stokes, immediate past president of an Alabama community, focused on another important aspect of the meeting: “By being in Ávila, the birthplace of my order, I received a much deeper sense of belonging to an international family and appreciation for my vocation. The bonus gift I received was a much better understanding of the role of the friars and spiritual assistants.”

Indeed, as superior general of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, Calle kicked off the conference with a talk on the history of the Secular Carmelites.

In it, he explained that the friars were originally heavily involved in every aspect of the community, even down to determining who had a vocation to join the secular order. That deep involvement had to change because there are simply not enough friars to do such work.

Despite this, or maybe even because of this, fraternity within and outside of the order has become even more important. During the four-day meeting, many had the opportunity to visit important sites in the life of St. Teresa such as the convent in which she spent much of her life and her birthplace. One Secular said she was amazed to see that St. Teresa had placed a large painting of St. Francis in the local convent. When asked about this, Calle made a surprising statement.

“I am 30% Franciscan,” he said, smiling at the reaction of the questioner. “My preparation for solemn profession was to go to Assisi in Italy without money, asking for food, and sleeping on the road for one month.”

When one of his brothers insisted it was dangerous to do this without money, he promised him he would bring money, so he put one peseta (this was before the euro) in his pocket.

Calle said he discovered: “When you ask for food, people give food.” Where did he sleep? “In the countryside, in a gas station, in the forest.” He had a backpack and a sleeping bag. He said the experience set him up for 13 years of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and parts of Spain, traveling 170 kilometers (almost 106 miles) every year for 13 years. Through this, he learned the importance of fraternity and communion, which he is asking of Secular Carmelites — indeed, the entire order — today.

In addition to many important talks, which were translated into many languages, the four-day conference included excursions to nearby Carmelite sites, a flamenco celebration, and a visit to a special exhibit of St. John of the Cross celebrating his 300th anniversary as a saint and his 100th anniversary as a doctor of the Church.

The closing Mass at the Ávila Cathedral ended with more than 30 priests on the altar, a magnificent choir, and more than 900 Carmelites raising their voices in the song that ends every Carmelite meeting around the world: the Salve Regina, a salute to the Queen of Heaven and Earth and of the Carmelite order under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

As Calle said, in this divided time, the spirituality of the Blessed Mother is of central importance. Just as she was literally filled with the presence of God, her Carmelite order witnesses to the fact that “the presence of God is in every soul without exception. The world needs to understand that everyone is a home for God.”

For more information about the Secular Carmelite Order in the U.S., visit ocdswashprov.org (Eastern Province), thereseocds.org (Central Province), or ocds.info (Western Province). Information about communities worldwide can be found at https://www.carmelitaniscalzi.com/en/.

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